Gold of Truth.

Purple of Mystery.

Red of Violence.

Blue of Endlessness.

Black of Destruction.

These are the five colors Shin Ren has managed to comprehend. Green of Balance and Orange of Change yet elude him, and it’s not to say he’s comprehended every aspect of each concept- but he has understood enough, at least, that it has transformed his Dao of Flame. Together with the Corpse Aflame and the Smiling Noble, working in sync, he has more of the colors of Dao than most.

He uses each and every one of them as he faces down the sands.

To his senses, the sands are pitch-black, reeking of Ruin and Death. He’s learning to recognize those aspects of Dao, how they weave in alongside Qi to manifest their concepts, and the world beyond the Wall is rich with it. Catching sight of those concepts in the world outside of his own Dao has helped deepen his own understanding. They say that there are always opportunities for advancement in the world, if one is only bold enough to grab hold of them.

Shin Ren wishes that sometimes that was not the case. He does not like the opportunities he has found in the depths of the breach.

Even if they have made him strong.

Two cores at once spin up, Qi cycling through his meridians and flowing forth into the shape of a technique. He wraps his comprehension, his killing Intent, and his knowledge of Dao together into a singular weave, clasped tightly around his master’s gift to him, the Guandao, and sweeps it across the battlefield.

A single beam of Flame, concentrated so brightly that it ignites the air around it and melts the Qi-rich stone it passes over, carves a furrow into the oncoming horde. A thousand or more skeletal constructs turn to slag, the ground beneath them glowing the colors of lava as they are burned hotter than they can handle, pieces of a Wall made to withstand demigods warping out of shape as they burn.

He swings again. And again. And again.

Gou Mai’s techniques are esoteric, specific to his cultivation in a way that’s hard to describe. He embraces the Dao of the Heights, he claims, which isn’t something that Shin Ren can really wrap his head around. Mei Yu is somewhat more straightforward, her sect’s techniques significantly more orthodox, but they too are subtle and specific, warping perspective and creating illusions out of light, sound, heat and movement.

Shin Ren can be subtle. He has some tools to allow him to weave illusion if he needs to, and to perform strange shapings.

These are not his strengths.

His greatest strength, above all, is firepower.

Walking forward, what was once ravenous dust capable of eating through skin and down to bone in the presence of living bodies has been turned to glass beneath his feet. Shifting piles of ashes make up all that’s left of the mindless creatures swarming over the barricades towards enemy lines.

His weapon, incredibly well-crafted though it may be, isn’t suited to fire and fire Qi, and he’s grown capable of overloading it if he isn’t careful. The staff is starting to smoke the slightest bit, and the glow of heat has travelled a bit too far up the blade for comfort.

Rather than unleash his technique again as a fresh wave of constructs rolls forward, Shin Ren focuses, reaching out with his senses. Two Cuts scream out into the world, his comprehension of the Dao of the Blade limited but still sharp enough to cleave into reality, and he takes advantage of the pause in the approach to begin to pull.

The glow of molten lava and open flames dims, turning to charred black- and he reaches out to the depths of his Souls, calling to the right one for the circumstance.

Can’t use anything too aligned with pure Ruin- it’ll wipe out the sands in front of him, but just attract and empower more later. Using pure Flame, divine as it may be, is still currently limited to what’s in front of him, and will only force him to spend hours killing endless hordes.

[Gilded Smile Of Delusion] rises up, glittering with many teeth and glinting jewels. Without a body in which to hold it, the Smiling Noble becomes the Soul born from it, heart demon and divinity wrapping around each other, both the same and distinct- and they emerge from out of their core, entering reality.

Feeling through new senses, embracing his own Divinity, he sees the connections between the constructs and a distant master, glinting like threads of gold. He sees the unspoken ways in which they coordinate, the subtle ticks and twitches that point him to where they come from and what they seek to do next.

And he changes them.

The heat of destruction all around becomes something less concrete, broader than just fire and temperature, and he casts it into the crowd of undead scrambling mindlessly over the walls. The threads of fine gold, rather than catching alight or being severed, slowly become tangled, melting together, forming new and more chaotic threads as minds and perceptions are altered under the will of the [Gilded Smile Of Delusion].

Shin Ren walks calmly through a crowd of rapidly-collapsing constructs, and as hundreds of them turn their claws on each other, become stumbling blocks for the ones behind, not one of them touches him. He smiles as they become a drain on the attention and strength of their original caster, the threads shivering and becoming strained- and a bit wider as they disconnect the technique, collapsing the horde before them.

Shin Ren walks over the malformed constructs, his steps reshaping the bones and debris beneath his feet as he does.

It is not the first time he’s cleared a beachhead back into the breach- but it is his fastest time yet.

Sounds of running soldiers and flashes of Qi, shaped by runic arrays and alchemy, light up behind him, his senses letting him feel the army’s advance well before he sees them. Without the constant mass of undead taking up the attention of Core-Formation and Foundational cultivators behind him, the tide begins to turn, flowing forward and already beginning to set up new defenses behind him.

It won’t be enough. Hasn’t been anytime they’ve done this in the last few weeks. It’ll be enough to blunt the next major offensive, though, and that’s worth its weight in gold.

Shin Ren looks up at his intended audience above.

The Fourth Blade’s palanquin remains ever-stable, a marble and gold platform covered in silks and the distant shape of moving, nubile bodies the only sign there’s anything on it at all.

Not enough, then.

Gou Mai crashes onto the ground beside him, once again appearing seemingly from out of literally nowhere. A series of skulls clatter in his hand as he casts them down, severed heads of a pack of lupine spirit beasts that were harassing the southern front disappearing into his storage ring to be turned in later.

“Faster than last time! By quite a bit, even!”

Shin Ren sighs, and it comes out tinged with embers and hints of purple flame. “They say even the darkest of places have opportunities for advancement.”

“And the greater the danger, the greater the opportunity, if one is but wise and strong enough to grasp it.”

“...I don’t love that part of the saying,” Shin Ren says, turning to look behind them both at the advancing soldiers and technicians. Many of them won’t come back once the next enemy push hits the breach, and Ren’s done his best to memorize as few faces as he can. Even still, he refuses to shut himself to them entirely- but… enough.

Gou Mai follows his gaze, and his smile dims a bit. “I… suppose that’s fair. The world can be cruel. Better for us to stand against that cruelty than let it wash over them, no?”

Shin Ren turns his gaze back up to the palanquin.

“Has Mei Yu gotten an estimated time of arrival for the Fifth Blade?”

“An hour, maybe less. They aren’t moving particularly fast, she says.”

Shin Ren nods. More time. Enough, maybe, to make the impression he needs.

“Do you mind keeping an eye on the advance for me? Most of the Commanders are busy, and I will have an easier time fighting if I don’t have to worry about the backline.”

Gou Mai nods, his face serious. “Of course. There’ll be plenty to weigh my steps here. No need to worry about them, brother- I’ll guard our juniors with my life.”

Shin Ren manages a smile of his own, clapping a hand against his friend’s shoulder.

No need for more words. Not now. He can sense more of what’s coming towards them, and time is limited.

He spins up two of his three cores, letting [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] fade back into himself. Subtlety won’t win the day here, especially since he doesn’t particularly care about “winning” the day. He doesn’t need to just be effective- he needs to make an impression.

For this to work, he needs to gain an audience.

Wielding two Souls at once is difficult- frankly, it’s almost more difficult than wielding three, [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] acting as a stabilising anchor between both of them. But his quieter Soul isn’t nearly so powerful or as Qi-rich as his other two, and he might need it later.

For now, he falls deeper and deeper into pure Flame.

Everything Burns.

The air ignites. The ground melts and begins to catch flame. The space around him becomes shaky, hints at another potential technique rearing up as his Dao, cultivation and Truth all begin to alter the very laws of reality around him.

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A hand made of molten limbs reaches out of the flames.

She pulls herself from the ruin, an amalgamation of ruined bodies and charred debris. The shape of her is vaguely humanoid, but it melts and reforms constantly, reflecting off of the strange demigod he once met (and is certain he will meet again). He feels a slight tug at that thought, a thread between the concept of his Soul and the concept of the being he once shared a Tribulation with- but puts it aside for later.

Rising from her body is the Dao of Flame, Black and Red like smoke and blood, like death and violence, and a face like a collapsing house and a broken skull roars out into the world.

And as he lets [Burning, Grasping Ruin] off its leash, he crowns her and reshapes the world around them.

[Divine Purity Of Flame] washes out from him like a holy site, chaotic flame and ruinous phosphorous becoming candle-flames that wave in winds of Qi. The Black and Red of his divine heart-demon flows up like smoke into a halo and pillar of light, Flame nearly clear-white and glowing with the hues of Gold, Purple and Blue.

Together, he takes the incarnation of the harm that Flame can cause and both binds and magnifies it through the beauty of higher form.

In turn, rather than charging forward unto the breach- she reaches back a hand for him.

He smiles, giving her a nod of thanks, and steps atop a palm of broken flesh and molten fat, and then widens his eyes and gives a surprised little yelp as rather than carrying him, she reaches back and throws him.

That bitch knows that she can’t manifest too far from him- but he can feel the satisfaction at the chaos caused, and at subverting his expectations.

He can’t help but smile a bit again, and wield the combined power of his Self (and all the Souls within) against a world gone wrong.

As is only expected of an avatar of destruction and death, [Burning, Grasping Ruin] launches him to just the right spot to cause more of it. He catches a brief glimpse of a skeletal figure, a blank skull dressed in robes of floating, three-dimensional pyramids, trying to weave together a new set of commands for the collapsed undead-

And he manifests his Souls atop her, slamming down with enough force to annihilate a town.

The horizon turns the colors of Dao as he lands, the edge of the breach and the sands beyond tinted strange colors as he reshapes eternity with his cultivation. The caster, and nearly a mile of terrain all around, turns to glass and glowing magma, purple, gold and crimson with real and divine heat.

It’s not enough.

As he leaves the “security” of the Wall and its breach, a snake that is not a snake, but a hundred scaled heads connecting to an endless set of branching bodies, rises from beneath the sands, ready to punish an advance- and one of its heads vanishes, a cauterizing beam of Flame annihilating it entirely.

Three more blasts emerge from the crater before the creature has a chance to properly align its many heads, though it moves faster than an eyeblink. A wave of venom and radioactive metals vomits out of dozens of throats, infecting the terrain and turning to caustic gases on contact with the heat.

The roar of a blazing engine echoes like a thunderclap, and a wave of fire descends from above, washing the Divine Beast in agonizing plasma.

The screaming of the beast is loud enough to shatter glass miles away, loud enough to shake a mortal apart- but as more heads turn upwards to face Shin Ren’s new position, a wave of heat rises from below. Hundreds of hands made of molten-wax flesh emerge from beneath the sands, absorbing their Ruin and adding it to her own- and grabbing hold of the creature above by dozens of its many spines.

The shriek redoubles in volume as the fingers dig through Qi-rich flesh, the Black and Red of the Dao of Flame magnifying the harm by a thousand through comprehension.

And as they bleed, as they are torn open and ash and charcoal infects the beast’s veins, Shin Ren speaks a Truth into the world.

Everything Burns.

The veins of the beast ignite, its blood combusting- and then combusting again, Flame catching fire on itself and spreading across a thousand meters through the biology of the creature. A series of explosions thunder through the atmosphere as the beast’s skin bubbles and bursts, and a final shriek rings out from it as the creature dies.

Qi floods out from the dying creature, it’s death leaking into the sands- but it’s not enough.

He can do more.

He reaches through Qi and grabs hold of everything that his heat touches, everything that is Burning, and begins to reshape them. A thousand spears of glass, rich in the spectrum of Dao, fire out like from a cannon, propulsion magnifying their momentum as he weaves his Dao into a sub-pattern of heat. Hundreds of cultivations scream out, beasts and constructs and casters of varying strengths dodging, blocking or avoiding the attack- but he doesn’t need to kill them. The first volley reveals locations.

The second one causes the real damage.

Shin Ren drags out nearly every drop of Qi he has, his cores spinning violently, his Souls straining at the pressure. More sand is Ruined into glass, infused with more and more and more Qi, until they glow with heat and damage from within- and then he fires again.

The world turns to light and sound as the battlefield detonates.

When Shin Ren’s senses recover, the world is reshaped.

Ruin is richer in the air than ever, and he pulls it in towards him, heat and destruction eagerly consumed by [Burning, Grasping Ruin]. The sands ripple and roil beneath a sea of glass, trapped and contained for now- but he’s done plenty of damage on his own.

The air is saturated with ash. Crackling strands of electricity dash between different temperature-zones, tinting the war-fog of smoke with flashes of light. Strange hues flow through the battlefield, the Flame of his cultivation tainting the world with beauty and horror both.

Shin Ren lands hard enough to crack the glass, coughing. His meridians ache, his body feels hot and sore, and his Cores are sluggish, slow.

It’s been a few minutes, maybe. Already, he can feel new entities moving in, the buzzing of insectile wings, the skittering of clawed packs, the crawling horrors of the strange undead. The Fifth Blade is supposed to arrive in close to an hour, maybe.

Distantly, Shin Ren can hear cheering, the sounds of advancing steps, of rearranging lines of combat. New enemies from other parts of the frontline divert away from the other fortress-cities to the north and south, coming to prey on the advancing troops and reinforce their lines.

Maybe this push will be enough to shift things. Likely not. It will buy a slight reprieve.

But he can do more.

A sound like crashing cymbals explodes across the sky, and the Commander holding back the Divine Beast above breaks at last, retreating as the cloud of geometric shapes and strange fluids rushes forward over the battlefield. The Commanders are Warrior realm fighters, second only to high-ranking Daemon Technicians and Generals, and while Divine Beasts scale in less straightforward ways, many can only be fought by Warriors.

But Shin Ren stares up at the advancing beast, staring down a changing atmosphere of a sky turned to living weapon, and wonders.

Is it enough?

…No.

He can do more.

All three of his Souls emerge. None of them are as large and heavy as they were mere hours ago at the start of the fight. He’s pulling hard on his resources, draining himself dry. Whatever else happens, he’ll finally have to retreat after this, pull back behind the improvised setup he’s created- it might take days or weeks to recover the energy he’s expending here.

But he agreed to a plan. A plan to change things.

He can do more.

[Divine Purity Of Flame], [Burning, Grasping Ruin] and [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] all morph into reality one last time. A shrine of divine heat, a beast of ruined flesh, and a smiling thing of gold and jewels, all shaping around each other- and Shin Ren stands in the center of them, weaving three similar but distinct cultivations at once.

He gives it everything. Every drop of Qi inside him is pulled from his Dantian, dragging like burning embers out through damaged meridians.

Gold, Purple, Blue, Red, and Black.

And there, flickering at the edges- hints of green. The lightest touch of jade.

Green of Balance. Of Growth. Harmony, shaped into a bomb.

His hands begin to smoke and burn. His fingers start to char, blisters and bleeding burn-wounds emerging from the heat of the thing in his hands.

Six of seven colors of Dao… and a hint of more. The crackling of charged air all around, electrical flashes of lightning touching lightly against the edges of his Flame. Supercharged by three minds, three cultivations, in perfect balance.

The sky turns to metal and geometry and stone, flashes of green droplets leaking from around its infinite edges as the Divine Beast approaches from the higher atmosphere-

Shin Ren opens his hands, and feels his skin begin to char as he unleashes the thing he has created.

It’s not a technique, really. It’s not as neat or well-formed as a repeatable, controllable attack.

But it hits fucking hard.

The world turns the color of heaven at sunset, dusk and dawn intermingled and reflected off miles of glass.

When the light fades, leaving behind black clouds that drift with multi-hued lightning and reflect the colors of the fires below, the debris that made the breach uneven and the corpses that cluttered it turned to flat, smooth obsidian.

And at its center, Shin Ren drags in a breath.

His throat hurts. His eyes take a while to work right, damaged and disoriented from the light and heat, and his skin crackles as he tries to move his mouth to take a second breath.

He lifts himself, his muscles feeling strange and alien as they recover from the damage done- he is no Warrior-realm, not yet, but against Flame, he knows how to fix himself. It will still takes days to heal properly, but he can force himself back together enough to move.

He pulls molten skin off of glass as he forces himself back to his feet. He’s not sure how long it’s been, but-

Ah. Close to an hour, maybe?

There’s a woman in front of him.

That feels generous. There is a child in front of him.

His eyes recover enough to let him see, though blurry and without color for a moment- and then they click into place a bit more. He looks down at someone who seems, at most, in her late teens. She wears all-black, but her face is innocent, a genuine concern shining in eyes that are full of tears.

At her waist is a simple sword, hanging from a red ribbon and bare of any sheathe.

The Fifth Blade.

Yula, the Sword Saint.

“Are… are you alright?” she asks, her voice actually trembling with what seems like real empathy.

Forcing his body to comply, Shin Ren hisses a pained breath as he bows, holding his fists in front of him.

“Junior Shin Ren greets honored senior Blade.”

“Oh, no no, I’m- I’m so sorry, they said that the battle was under control, but that was- I’ve heard about you I think! The Flame Atop the Wall! I-”

She stops herself, swallowing past a lump in her throat apparent even to his eyes and bowing in return, much deeper than propriety demands.

“Yula of the Blades thanks Shin Ren of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect for his sacrifice and his strength. I apologize for my dishonorable delay in reaching here on time to assist you.”

Shin Ren smiles through cracked lips, blood leaking from his blisters. “Thank you for your arrival, honored one. While I’m sure there will be other opportunities for us to assist each other in the future, this Shin Ren, fool that he may be, is nothing if not bold. Faced by the splendor of a true Blade, I would ask a favor of you, gracious one.”

Smiling, she reaches out a hand to him, asking him to leave the bow. “Please,” she says. “For your service, I would be honored to do a favor for one so brave.”

Shin Ren takes a breath. He remembers the conversation he had in his dreams with a beastkin colder than logic, a woman he once thought beneath him and a man forgotten as easily as a passing thought.

He firms his resolve.

Interesting that’s it’s almost easier to nearly kill himself than it is to take that first step into the unknown.

“Please, honored one. I humbly request that you take this junior under your tutelage, as an Aspirant of the Cut and assistant to the Fifth Blade.”